Evangelist Ray Comfort is known for
regularly riling secularists and now an atheist who is less than
enthralled with his message has hijacked Comfort’s official Twitter
account in an effort to get back at the “Evolution vs. God” filmmaker.

The non-believer was able to secure Comfort’s Twitter handle (@RayComfort)
after one of his staff members accidentally changed his username. Just
moments after the error occurred, someone else registered the
@RayComfort, making it impossible for Comfort’s team to get it back.

As a result, the Christian leader has been forced to change his Twitter handle to @RayComfortLW.
But that’s not the most intriguing part of the story. The individual
who ended up with Comfort’s Twitter handle is now using it to push back
against the evangelist’s beliefs and contentions — and the person has
even given Comfort some demands.

“The atheist who took my Twitter name,
then gave me an ultimatum. He said that he would return it if I made a
public statement,” Comfort told TheBlaze. “He tweeted that I must say
that I would ‘no longer denigrate, blame and demonize skeptics and
nonbelievers, including agnostics and atheists.’”

Real
Ray wants his handle back. I've promised to do so, on condition he
stops badmouthing skeptics and nonbelievers. I'm waiting for reply.

Comfort said that he told the unnamed
individual that he loves non-believers and has never demonized them and
that he will be passing on the offer. The evangelist also said he
doesn’t know who the person is, but that it could be any number of
activists.

This year, alone, Comfort said he has banned over 3,000 people on Facebook for “blasphemy and cussing.”

TheBlaze also reached out to the
atheist behind the account. While we asked for the person to share his
or her identity, this request was declined, however answers to some of
our questions were provided.

“I took over the handle to build up a
parody account of Ray,” the person said in an e-mail interview. “If
you’ve read my recent tweets, I’m using it to promote humanistic values
and science now.”

Here are just some of the more recent tweets the mystery individual is sending from Comfort’s old username:

Demonizing
people who are LBGTQ and using the Slippery Slope fallacy to equate
them with pedophiles is an epitome of divisive dishonesty.

The atheist corroborated Comfort’s
story and explained that he acquired the name after the evangelist’s
personal assistant inadvertently changed the Twitter handle.

“Someone took it before me, and
released it. When I tested if it’s available, it was and I simply opened
a new account with it,” he said. “So I did not ‘get it away from
Comfort.’ It was abandoned by his PA.”

As for the ultimatum, the account
snatcher said that the goal was to force the evangelist to “stop
publicly blaming and denigrating skeptics, agnostics and atheists.”

Comfort said his team has contacted
Twitter about the situation, but it’s unclear what the company might do,
if anything, to resolve it. In the meantime, the unnamed user said that
offers have been received from others who are interested in taking the
account over, but that returning it to Comfort has not been completely
ruled out.

It’s certainly no surprise why
non-believers would dislike Comfort. The Christian leader opposes
Darwinian theory and has worked diligently to try and disprove it.

“It’s a love-hate relationship. I love them and they hate me, and they will do anything to frustrate the gospel,” he continued.

Comfort also noted that his
anti-Darwinian film “Evolution vs. God” is at the center of much of the
contention surrounding him — and that this situation may be a direct
consequence of that.

“After the release of ‘Evolution vs
God’ it energized the hatred that many atheists have for me. In four
months there have been over 104,000 comments on YouTube and thousands of
the comments are livid,” he told TheBlaze. “This is because Darwinian
evolution is a hill upon which atheists and evolution believers are
prepared to die. It says that we are primates, that there are no moral
absolutes, and there’s no God to whom we must answer.”